Roof Vent (Bathroom Vent)

Alright, I promised I'd be posting photos of the terrifying job of installing the vent on the roof, and here they are.

To start the job, I looked at a few on-line videos, and I quite like the ones by "Ask The Builder.com". In it, he shows an easy way to locate the best spot for the hole, which is to just put a nail into the roof from the interior. You can see the shingle that's raised-up by the nail in this photo. This is where the vent will go.



As I mentioned previously, the hardest part was the actual drilling of the hole. For further details on that, just go back to the previous entry. Once I had that done, my aluminum 4" duct was easy to install, using 3 small stainless steel screws.





The next step was to remove the nails that would be in the way of sliding the vent into place, and to trim the shingles. Now this is where I screwed up. I had my measurements with me, but I cut an inch off the top shingle, and I shouldn't have. If I had brought-up the vent with me on the roof I would have caught this mistake. In the end, I was able to just piece-back the 1 inch strip, and bury it in clear roofing cement (along with the underside, and edges and anywhere that would help against leaks).





You can see the goof here. The cement is clear, and it's laid-down pretty thick here (about 1/4 inch thick) over the edges of the vent.





Lastly, here is my homemade ledge. Very crude, but it did the trick.





Yay! All done.



Now that it's been a few days, I've had the chance to use the fan, but I think there might be a problem with the top flap/shutter. It seems like after a few minutes of running the fan it then suddenly sounds like it's being obstructed. This means I'll have to crawl back up there again. Ugh...

Also, while I was up in the attic, I decided to run the "spare" wire that used to feed the bathroom light into a permanent overhead attic light with a switch next to the attic door. The attic actually used to have a working light in it, but it was on the old knob and tube system, and it's not connected anymore (the socket is also missing from the fixture).

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Another fun side note is that while cleaning the garage last week, I finally decided to get rid of the old vanity. My dad had suggested that I should keep it and use it for storage, but it's just so disgusting that I dragged it to the road. I did take a few "glamour shots" of it for you guys. LOL. I'll spare you and only post the ONE photo, but do take a moment to bask in its hideousness.

Shaky

As I sit here right now, I'm nervous, a bit shaky, and bathed in sweat. I decided that "today is the day" that I install the bathroom vent in the roof. I'm currently taking a short break.

A bit of background: I'm terrified of heights/falling, but since the portion of roof in question is only about a 6 foot drop to the garage roof, it's not such a big deal, but it still involves climbing ladders, and working on a roof with about a 45 degree pitch. The job itself is actually pretty simple, though. Drill a hole, fit a vent/pipe, then fit and install the cap. I could hire someone else to do this, but I'm too poor/cheap to do this, and I feel that if *I* do it, I know it will be done properly. Having just been up on the roof, I can see that some of the other vents/plumbing stacks were done a bit sloppily. I don't know if this is from the roofers who redid the roof in 2001, or if this was done badly in the first place (when the plumbing stack was switched to ABS.

So far, I'm about halfway there. I have all my ladders set up, and I had to install a temporary 2x4 ledge near the roof edge so that I can get on and off the ladder without falling (this is way trickier than it sounds). I made this at the last minute with just a 2x4, maybe 3 feet long, and 3 metal strips, screwed to the back. These strips are not the strongest, and are NOT made to be load bearing, but they're all I had on hand. They are the kind used to hold ducts in place. But I used three, and I'm being careful not to put too much weight on it. The other ends of each strip are held with a roofing nail *under* a shingle (so that the hole won't cause a leak later).

I'm taking a break after finishing the most difficult part of the job, which is to drill/cut the hole. I had intended to use a 4" hole saw, but the plywood really killed the battery on my drill, and I could see that it was going to take forever, so I switched to using my crappy jigsaw instead. I only needed to drill 2 pilot holes, then cut the remaining. At least with the hole saw, I had an accurate line that I could follow, but remember that getting the tools up there is quite tricky.

For the most part, I'm holding my essentials in a very large pocketed tool belt, but things like the saw (because of the incline) just slide down the roof. This is where that temporary ledge comes in handy.

Photos soon, of course.

If all goes well, my length of aluminum duct (to pass through the roof) will fit just snugly, I can screw it in, and then it'll just be a matter of trimming shingles, fitting the vent (which will also just want to constantly slide down the roof), nail, cement, etc. The rest of the connections can be done inside.